Finally someone to speak the truth about this, Bruce Lee had hundreds of books on fighting, thousands, he knew Judo, he knew Jujitsu, he looked at everything, he was obsessed, but he specifically trained in his style for real fighting, actual fights where there's no rules, in the octagon, there's rules. In a real fight to the death, guys don't sit laying on top of each other for an hour.
I totally agree with you. Bruce was about real street fighting, not in the rings. People need to get real about this. They need to separate sport fighting verses life or death street fighting.
If you look at Bruce Lee's writing in Tao of Jeet Kune Do there's about 7 pages on grappling (most of it drawings of techniques, pages 115-123 in my version of the book) at the end of the Tools section. He catalogues grappling techniques the same way he catalogues different strikes earlier in the chapter. This is a common method of reasoning in Chinese work -- you start by listing everything, laying it all out and then you learn about how it works...the forms in Wing Chun are essentially move catalogues. So Lee lists all the grappling tools -- throws, takedowns, locks, and chokes. What he doesn't catalogue are things like guard passing and pummeling -- wrestling and clinching to gain position for a choke or hold. I would extrapolate from this that Bruce thought of grapples as instantaneous things that you pounced on in the flow of the fight. Put another way, he was looking at grappling the same way he looked at striking and trapping. He wanted grapples to be things he could mix into combinations. This is reflected in the Long Beach footage too. He traps and hits in a very Wing Chun-ish kind of opening, but then he finishes suddenly with a Judo-like throw. He doesn't get a collar tie and slowly grapple for position. He gains the position to initiate a grappling finish by striking. I think you're partially right that this comes from his concern that grappling for position would expose his vitals (ears, genitals, eyes, throat, etc.) to dirty tactics. I think it also comes from the fact that Lee was gifted with such extraordinary speed that he thought he could do everything in a flash of movement. I think it also comes from the Wing Chun and fencing philosophy that was about overwhelming suddenness and rapid, direct combination.
If that's true then Bruce was delusional. All throws aren't perfect and all strikes aren't clean, you WILL find yourself in a bind and have long exchanges.
Thanks for the constant reminder that jkd was for REAL combat. Combat sports are extremely challenging but for the most part no one gets maimed or killed
That's an interesting allegation. I've studied with guru Dan and Richard Bustillo (RIP) since the mid-1990s. I've never heard them say that Bruce admitted to having a grappling weakness. I'm sure that great Larry Hartsell (RIP) a grappling phenomenon who also trained with Bruce would also challenge that allegation.
Larry Hartsell was one of Bruce's Chinatown students and he was a very good grappler. Bruce Lee had plenty of exposure to grappling, he just didn't use sport grappling techniques where there are all sorts of rules about what you can and can't do.
Wow…this was a very different take on what Bruce did or didn't do with grappling and I like it. Reminds me of something both Inosanto and, I believe, L.A. student Bob Bremer said in regard to Bruce's approach: that he didn't look at a system in terms of what technique, what approach, he could take from it; he looked at it in terms of "What could this system do to me and how I can stop it?" That's how he looked at grappling, a range that-as a small, lean Asian man in America where everyone was bigger, and as someone who literally walked around looking at people, thinking, "What would happen if that guy/those people attacked me?"-he did NOT want to be stuck in in a real-life situation. Ted Wong student Mike Gittleson gives a very good explanation of the difference between Jun Fan and JKD: that Jun Fan was more an inside-range art focusing on “connection," i.e. hand/arm contact, to remove obstacles and control and hit the opponent, while JKD was more an outside-range art of “disconnection," using footwork and body movement to avoid or go around obstacles to hit the opponent and minimize the need for close-quarter contact. Basically, if you're close enough to trap and grapple your opponent or opponents, they're close enough to trap and grapple YOU, a situation Lee increasingly saw as dangerous. Not saying he was a shitty grappler; just saying, as the video did, that he was more about neutralizing it quickly and staying on or getting back to his feet were he forced into that range. I recall James DeMile saying how he and the Seattle crew were never able to hit Bruce, NEVER, and that his big wish in life was to have hit him just once, lol. But think about it: All those dudes outweighed him by 60 lb or more, Jesse Glover was a nationally ranked judo champion, two others were judo blackbelts, one had a wrestling background, so surely they must've tried taking him to the ground and beating his scrawny ass there, if only through an old-fashioned playground tackle a la the early UFC. Yet that never seemed to have happened. Later, neither Small Circle Jujitsu founder Wally Jay nor Pan American gold-winning judoka Hayward Nishioka could do anything with Bruce if he didn't want it, Wally describing him as a fly who was too fast to catch. So, yeah, whatever grappling game the Little Dragon did or didn't have, the notion that any modern competitor would ragdoll him like he was six-year-old because he'd have no answer for it is, in my mind, more than a bit speculative.
When he was in Seattle long before he went to California and met gene lebell he was training in judo and other grappling arts, i believe his judo teacher was a man by the name of Sato who i believe was the teacher of his friend Hayward nishioka so yes Bruce knew grappling and no gene wasn't his official teacher.
Exactly. Bruce's first student was also a monster Judoka (Jesse Glover). Bruce trained with master Fred Sato and Chris Kato in Seattle, along with Wally Jay as well. He was also a voracious reader and seeker of knowledge, and read countless books on Greco Roman wrestling, Chinese Shuai Jiao, etc.
Most street fights become grappling matches as soon as one guy gets his bell rung with a punch. It's natural to grab on as soon as a strike hits you. So, as you said, learning to grapple is important, if only to get out of doing it. I'm not trying to make a counter point; I'm just adding to your assertion that fighting a street fight on the ground should be avoided but the way to do this is to know grappling. Love Casablanca.
Thank you for a very well informed and unbiased breakdown of Bruce Lees concepts on grappling, Totally agree with everything you have said , very well balanced points addressing MMA too and it's rule set which would exclude Bruce's whole concept of self defence applications. Great video really enjoy your info.
Thanks for the input and support. It’s a tough balance to get, isn’t it? I get accused of dissing BJJ/MMA sometimes when, in fact, I’m saying that we just need to understand the pros and cons. Thanks again!
When I was in prison two guys got into a fight and one did a bjj technique and got the other in a guillotine. The one in a guillotine freaked out so reached up and gouged the eye of the bjj guy. He stuck his finger, up to the second joint, into the bjj guy's eye socket. Bjj guy let go in a real hurry. The only thing that saved bjj guy's eye was that gouger guy did not hook his finger in the eye socket.
Ouch! That’s nasty. I had a job back in the day (security type thing) and saw something similar to that too. Eye-gouge ended matters. And the thing was, the better fighter LOST, if you know what I mean. No way in a thousand years that the guy could have beaten him in a fair fight. He was getting worked over pretty bad and then landed a wild thumb to the eye, which was from what I could tell, accidental. It didn’t matter, though. It was a fight stopper…and an instant lesson to me as to how dangerous all-out fighting was. At the time I was boxing and saw combat pretty much from that perspective. No pun intended, but it opened my eyes to reality. Anyway, thanks for watching and for the input. We all need to hear that.
In Longstreet where the blind man fights the opponent , there is close in clinch work and they end up on the ground , with a type of head lock … I think that was beautiful ….
Excellent essay on Bruce Lee's investigation and applications of grappling You are so cool dude! Love how you talk bro! The comment about ignoring your wife is hilarious!
There's a street fighting format out there, that is literally mma with no rules , it's not for the faint hearted , thumbs pushed into the eyes , it's a strange sight seeing a tough monster of a man screaming in pain .
Why no one mentions his first student Jesse Glover was a judo practitioner when he met Bruce if I know martial artist ego i know the styles were put to the test.
The word 'grappling' in today's world tends to be associated with MMA techniques within a ruleset but for the street what Bruce would have had in mind for JKD was NO RULES with his concept of PULL,STRIKE,PINCH,BITE to vital targets . This would be especially important for WOMEN to defend themselves against attack....One must never go to the ground in the street as a STRATEGY (Like in a controlled Ruleset MMA contest) because it would make you vulnerable to pack attacks & weapons...One must only go to the ground by default as a last resort. Bruce researched grappling but not to add its techniques to a multiple collection of them called' JKD'.....Bruce investigated grappling to see how it worked in order to PRE-EMPT it with SIMPLICITY to DECISIVE TARGETS. If one is in a LIFE or DEATH situation there is no such thing as 'FOUL Fighting' .....In fact the term only could come from Sport in the first place. 8:35 'If he can tap out he can reach for a weapon.' ...Good point. Absolutely...People could take out a knife of a jacket while on the ground.
Thanks for watching and for the input. And just to be honest, that quote about tapping and reaching for a weapon was from Sifu Tony Massengill. I should’ve credited him when I said that. I suppose I owe him a few bucks for that LOL. But, beside that, thanks for weighing in. Those are great points.
Not even Helio Gracie and Jigoro Kano fully investigate grappling and they dedicated their lives to it. Saying Bruce Lee did is extremely pretentious and kinda dumb.
GW has it down. It is obvious from his writing that he was very aware of grappling techniques, yet his application of them seems shallow and somewhat misguided. As we are using his film work as examples of his concepts of fighting, I must bring up his laughable throw blocks like knocking off grabbing hands and putting his hands out to block hip throws, these moves show that he had not done much real fighting against grapplers because those things never will work in real life if you are grabbed swftly trying to swat the hand off will not break the hold and will ensure you get thrown as for putting both hands down to try a hip check this shows a total lack of understanding the throw is not coming from the hip the hip is just the fulcrum for it putting your hands there is just putting a little addditional bump on the fulcrum. Saying no one will ever take you down is like saying no one will ever get your back, of course they will did he know how to escape from there well he was very good and very fast but no I dont believe he knew how to float around a hip and apply a counter throw. Why are we still talking about some movie kung fu guy long after he is dead quite probably from a extended drug use and overtraining.
Finally someone to speak the truth about this, Bruce Lee had hundreds of books on fighting, thousands, he knew Judo, he knew Jujitsu, he looked at everything, he was obsessed, but he specifically trained in his style for real fighting, actual fights where there's no rules, in the octagon, there's rules. In a real fight to the death, guys don't sit laying on top of each other for an hour.
I totally agree with you. Bruce was about real street fighting, not in the rings. People need to get real about this. They need to separate sport fighting verses life or death street fighting.
If you look at Bruce Lee's writing in Tao of Jeet Kune Do there's about 7 pages on grappling (most of it drawings of techniques, pages 115-123 in my version of the book) at the end of the Tools section. He catalogues grappling techniques the same way he catalogues different strikes earlier in the chapter. This is a common method of reasoning in Chinese work -- you start by listing everything, laying it all out and then you learn about how it works...the forms in Wing Chun are essentially move catalogues.
So Lee lists all the grappling tools -- throws, takedowns, locks, and chokes. What he doesn't catalogue are things like guard passing and pummeling -- wrestling and clinching to gain position for a choke or hold. I would extrapolate from this that Bruce thought of grapples as instantaneous things that you pounced on in the flow of the fight. Put another way, he was looking at grappling the same way he looked at striking and trapping. He wanted grapples to be things he could mix into combinations.
This is reflected in the Long Beach footage too. He traps and hits in a very Wing Chun-ish kind of opening, but then he finishes suddenly with a Judo-like throw. He doesn't get a collar tie and slowly grapple for position. He gains the position to initiate a grappling finish by striking. I think you're partially right that this comes from his concern that grappling for position would expose his vitals (ears, genitals, eyes, throat, etc.) to dirty tactics. I think it also comes from the fact that Lee was gifted with such extraordinary speed that he thought he could do everything in a flash of movement. I think it also comes from the Wing Chun and fencing philosophy that was about overwhelming suddenness and rapid, direct combination.
What a great comment. Thank you!
I'm.just going to say bruce lee was the best street fighter ever,he did what he had to do to win rip bruce lee!
If that's true then Bruce was delusional.
All throws aren't perfect and all strikes aren't clean, you WILL find yourself in a bind and have long exchanges.
Thanks for the constant reminder that jkd was for REAL combat. Combat sports are extremely challenging but for the most part no one gets maimed or killed
Bruce Lee knew many top Grapplers. He even once said if there's any weakness in my style is the lack of grappling, but nobody's going to get me down.
That's an interesting allegation. I've studied with guru Dan and Richard Bustillo (RIP) since the mid-1990s. I've never heard them say that Bruce admitted to having a grappling weakness. I'm sure that great Larry Hartsell (RIP) a grappling phenomenon who also trained with Bruce would also challenge that allegation.
@@KevinDJames-gx8oo great since you know him personally you should ask him.funny with all that training you never thought to ask
i can't wait to hear what he has to say .
@@KevinDJames-gx8oo by the way do you think larry learned his grapping from bruce ?
@@KevinDJames-gx8oo oh one more thing since you think you're an authority on Larry. who taught him the sticks? Hint it wasn't Dan.
Very informative! I've never heard an explanation so informed about why Bruce didn't use grappling, or apparently not much. Thanks for insight 😮
Larry Hartsell was one of Bruce's Chinatown students and he was a very good grappler. Bruce Lee had plenty of exposure to grappling, he just didn't use sport grappling techniques where there are all sorts of rules about what you can and can't do.
Wow…this was a very different take on what Bruce did or didn't do with grappling and I like it. Reminds me of something both Inosanto and, I believe, L.A. student Bob Bremer said in regard to Bruce's approach: that he didn't look at a system in terms of what technique, what approach, he could take from it; he looked at it in terms of "What could this system do to me and how I can stop it?" That's how he looked at grappling, a range that-as a small, lean Asian man in America where everyone was bigger, and as someone who literally walked around looking at people, thinking, "What would happen if that guy/those people attacked me?"-he did NOT want to be stuck in in a real-life situation. Ted Wong student Mike Gittleson gives a very good explanation of the difference between Jun Fan and JKD: that Jun Fan was more an inside-range art focusing on “connection," i.e. hand/arm contact, to remove obstacles and control and hit the opponent, while JKD was more an outside-range art of “disconnection," using footwork and body movement to avoid or go around obstacles to hit the opponent and minimize the need for close-quarter contact. Basically, if you're close enough to trap and grapple your opponent or opponents, they're close enough to trap and grapple YOU, a situation Lee increasingly saw as dangerous.
Not saying he was a shitty grappler; just saying, as the video did, that he was more about neutralizing it quickly and staying on or getting back to his feet were he forced into that range. I recall James DeMile saying how he and the Seattle crew were never able to hit Bruce, NEVER, and that his big wish in life was to have hit him just once, lol. But think about it: All those dudes outweighed him by 60 lb or more, Jesse Glover was a nationally ranked judo champion, two others were judo blackbelts, one had a wrestling background, so surely they must've tried taking him to the ground and beating his scrawny ass there, if only through an old-fashioned playground tackle a la the early UFC. Yet that never seemed to have happened. Later, neither Small Circle Jujitsu founder Wally Jay nor Pan American gold-winning judoka Hayward Nishioka could do anything with Bruce if he didn't want it, Wally describing him as a fly who was too fast to catch.
So, yeah, whatever grappling game the Little Dragon did or didn't have, the notion that any modern competitor would ragdoll him like he was six-year-old because he'd have no answer for it is, in my mind, more than a bit speculative.
Well said. Great response.
When he was in Seattle long before he went to California and met gene lebell he was training in judo and other grappling arts, i believe his judo teacher was a man by the name of Sato who i believe was the teacher of his friend Hayward nishioka so yes Bruce knew grappling and no gene wasn't his official teacher.
Exactly. Bruce's first student was also a monster Judoka (Jesse Glover). Bruce trained with master Fred Sato and Chris Kato in Seattle, along with Wally Jay as well.
He was also a voracious reader and seeker of knowledge, and read countless books on Greco Roman wrestling, Chinese Shuai Jiao, etc.
Most street fights become grappling matches as soon as one guy gets his bell rung with a punch. It's natural to grab on as soon as a strike hits you. So, as you said, learning to grapple is important, if only to get out of doing it. I'm not trying to make a counter point; I'm just adding to your assertion that fighting a street fight on the ground should be avoided but the way to do this is to know grappling. Love Casablanca.
Thank you for a very well informed and unbiased breakdown of Bruce Lees concepts on grappling, Totally agree with everything you have said , very well balanced points addressing MMA too and it's rule set which would exclude Bruce's whole concept of self defence applications.
Great video really enjoy your info.
Thanks for the input and support. It’s a tough balance to get, isn’t it? I get accused of dissing BJJ/MMA sometimes when, in fact, I’m saying that we just need to understand the pros and cons. Thanks again!
When I was in prison two guys got into a fight and one did a bjj technique and got the other in a guillotine. The one in a guillotine freaked out so reached up and gouged the eye of the bjj guy. He stuck his finger, up to the second joint, into the bjj guy's eye socket. Bjj guy let go in a real hurry. The only thing that saved bjj guy's eye was that gouger guy did not hook his finger in the eye socket.
Ouch! That’s nasty. I had a job back in the day (security type thing) and saw something similar to that too. Eye-gouge ended matters. And the thing was, the better fighter LOST, if you know what I mean. No way in a thousand years that the guy could have beaten him in a fair fight. He was getting worked over pretty bad and then landed a wild thumb to the eye, which was from what I could tell, accidental. It didn’t matter, though. It was a fight stopper…and an instant lesson to me as to how dangerous all-out fighting was. At the time I was boxing and saw combat pretty much from that perspective. No pun intended, but it opened my eyes to reality.
Anyway, thanks for watching and for the input. We all need to hear that.
Great video - not just the groin but the hit the back or the back of the head and neck or throat
In Longstreet where the blind man fights the opponent , there is close in clinch work and they end up on the ground , with a type of head lock … I think that was beautiful ….
Very good points! :)
Excellent essay on Bruce Lee's investigation and applications of grappling You are so cool dude! Love how you talk bro! The comment about ignoring your wife is hilarious!
Lee spent time with Gene Lebell doing judo.
There's a street fighting format out there, that is literally mma with no rules , it's not for the faint hearted , thumbs pushed into the eyes , it's a strange sight seeing a tough monster of a man screaming in pain .
I agree 💯 %%%!!!!
"Just win baby"....Al Davis owner of the Oakland Raiders
Ha. And the Raiders of old probably did some of that stuff on the field LOL.
Why no one mentions his first student Jesse Glover was a judo practitioner when he met Bruce if I know martial artist ego i know the styles were put to the test.
He did some Judo. There is a picture of Lee with a Judo Gi.
Hey Sifu, like the intro, but could ya change the music...? Maybe something a little more "wing-chun-esque" & not so Hans Zimmer?? 😁
It's real!
Biting your way out of an arm bar ??????????? That will never happen if the arm bar is set if you try that shit you will get your arm broken
The word 'grappling' in today's world tends to be associated with MMA techniques within a ruleset but for the street what Bruce would have had in mind for JKD was NO RULES with his concept of PULL,STRIKE,PINCH,BITE to vital targets . This would be especially important for WOMEN to defend themselves against attack....One must never go to the ground in the street as a STRATEGY (Like in a controlled Ruleset MMA contest) because it would make you vulnerable to pack attacks & weapons...One must only go to the ground by default as a last resort. Bruce researched grappling but not to add its techniques to a multiple collection of them called' JKD'.....Bruce investigated grappling to see how it worked in order to PRE-EMPT it with SIMPLICITY to DECISIVE TARGETS. If one is in a LIFE or DEATH situation there is no such thing as 'FOUL Fighting' .....In fact the term only could come from Sport in the first place. 8:35 'If he can tap out he can reach for a weapon.' ...Good point. Absolutely...People could take out a knife of a jacket while on the ground.
Thanks for watching and for the input. And just to be honest, that quote about tapping and reaching for a weapon was from Sifu Tony Massengill. I should’ve credited him when I said that. I suppose I owe him a few bucks for that LOL. But, beside that, thanks for weighing in. Those are great points.
10:25 'a rather scary story for people who write too much & might ignore the other things going on' ....? 🤔
Not even Helio Gracie and Jigoro Kano fully investigate grappling and they dedicated their lives to it.
Saying Bruce Lee did is extremely pretentious and kinda dumb.
GW has it down. It is obvious from his writing that he was very aware of grappling techniques, yet his application of them seems shallow and somewhat misguided. As we are using his film work as examples of his concepts of fighting, I must bring up his laughable throw blocks like knocking off grabbing hands and putting his hands out to block hip throws, these moves show that he had not done much real fighting against grapplers because those things never will work in real life if you are grabbed swftly trying to swat the hand off will not break the hold and will ensure you get thrown as for putting both hands down to try a hip check this shows a total lack of understanding the throw is not coming from the hip the hip is just the fulcrum for it putting your hands there is just putting a little addditional bump on the fulcrum. Saying no one will ever take you down is like saying no one will ever get your back, of course they will did he know how to escape from there well he was very good and very fast but no I dont believe he knew how to float around a hip and apply a counter throw. Why are we still talking about some movie kung fu guy long after he is dead quite probably from a extended drug use and overtraining.
This is a laughable comment. Utterly ridiculous.